


all your small steps

by surrenderer



Series: kylux positivity week 2.0 [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Armitage Hux Lives, Armitage Hux Smokes, Ben Solo Lives, Exes, Exile, Fix-It, Kylux Positivity Week, Kylux Positivity Week 2020, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25042186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surrenderer/pseuds/surrenderer
Summary: “You’re alive.”Hux flicks the ash off the end of his cigarra casually, although his hands shake. He hopes Ren doesn’t see it. “Yes. Were you expecting otherwise?”For Kylux Positivity Week 2.0, Day 5: Fix-It/Exile
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: kylux positivity week 2.0 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807006
Comments: 20
Kudos: 104
Collections: Kylux Positivity Week 2.0





	all your small steps

**Author's Note:**

> It's a double-prompt fic for [KPW Day 5!](https://twitter.com/kyluxpositivity)
> 
> Three things to be found here:  
> \- Fix-it  
> \- Exile  
> \- A dash of [Run](https://www.hbo.com/run)
> 
> You don't need to have watched Run to understand what's happening here, though.
> 
> The title is from ["Seed"](https://open.spotify.com/track/4jR2ezb3YZ9HGlAQZJl6IL?si=bkUOxGyrRu2FZj-VjOXLIQ) by The Academy Is..., which is probably my second-favorite song by them.

Hux is standing outside his small home, a cigarra between his lips and staring out at the rain when Ren arrives.

At first, he thinks he’s seeing things when he notices a man coming up the road, rain dripping off his cloak and hood, but then the figure stops at his gate and stares at him like he’s seen a ghost.

Even without the scar, even without the mask, Hux would know that face anywhere.

He doesn’t make a move for the blaster at his hip, so Ren pushes the gate open hesitantly and comes closer, until he’s standing at the three steps that would lead him up to the porch.

“You’re alive.”

Hux flicks the ash off the end of his cigarra casually, although his hands shake. He hopes Ren doesn’t see it. “Yes. Were you expecting otherwise?”

Ren blinks, then pushes the hood off his head, despite the rain. His hair is already damp and this does nothing to help his appearance. Maybe he thinks he’ll gain Hux’s sympathy more easily like this.

“They told me you were dead.”

“They would have, wouldn’t they? Which one lied to you?” Hux muses. Dameron was always more of a realist than he let on, hardened by years of war just like the rest of them even if he tried to hide it, but the traitor, FN-2187, had every reason to actually want him dead. “They tried to tell me you were dead too, you know. Your friends in the Resistance. Your precious scavenger girl wouldn’t let them lie, though. She thought it would hurt me more to know you were alive and returned with her to betray the Order.”

Ren pauses. “Did it?”

Hux shrugs. “Your betrayal came long before your return to the Resistance. I’d made my peace with it, as long as you suffered the consequences too.”

“I died. Rey brought me back with the Force, but I couldn’t stay there. I didn’t want to. They would have turned me into a figurehead for redemption or executed me as a war criminal. I suggested this instead.”

This, meaning exile.

Hux nods. “Good choice.”

They both fall silent, the rain falling around them and soaking Ren to the bone, and Hux finally gestures for Ren to join him on the small porch.

“Why are you here? If you thought I was dead, why come looking for me in the first place?”

“I didn’t believe them. They told me you were dead, that you didn’t escape the _Steadfast,_ but I didn’t believe them—I knew I would’ve been able to feel you die. So I took a transport to Arkanis.”

A foolish pact, made before Starkiller, to meet on Arkanis at the old Academy, if the two of them needed an escape route. It was a silly fantasy, made by two young lovers caught up in their own little world. Hux is surprised Ren even remembered it, given all the effort they’d put into destroying their history when they thought their dalliance was only holding them back from their true potential.

“I thought you’d be there, but I found your note instead.” Ren holds out a crumpled piece of flimsi. Old-fashioned, but it was all Hux had to work with at the time. He’d written what he needed to, in script he memorized from the holonet, and tucked the sheaf of flimsi right back where he found it.

“Maybe the author left it for someone else,” he points out, because even now, he can’t help but needle Ren a little.

“Maybe. But who else would know to leave coordinates and instructions in Alderaanian? Coordinates that led me straight here to you?”

Hux shrugs, taking the last drag of his cigarra before flicking the butt into the ashtray. “You could’ve been chasing a ghost. Or fallen into a trap.”

Ren’s face softens; without the scar, he looks younger than he ever has—even younger than when they first met on the _Finalizer_ , eight years ago. “I had to know. I couldn’t—if I was chasing a ghost, then I’d learn to live with it. But I couldn’t live with the uncertainty either.”

Standing here, in his wet cloak and dripping water all over his porch, Ren looks nothing like the Supreme Leader he remembers. But then again, Hux highly doubts he’s the same man Ren remembers from their last encounter either.

Once upon a time, they nearly ruled the galaxy. Hux is surprised to find that he doesn’t want that anymore.

“Come in, then, if you have nowhere else to be,” he says, and Ren follows him inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi to me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/parttimewonders) and [Tumblr](https://part-timewonders.tumblr.com/).


End file.
